The present invention is related to a water faucet, a so called sillcock, intended to be mounted in a wall between a warm space and a cold space, as for instance in the external wall of a building, so as to provide a water flow passage through the wall from its warm side to its cold side. Such a sillcock generally comprises a pipe providing a water flow passage from the warm side to the cold side of the wall, a shut-off valve means for said water flow passage including a valve seat and an associated valve body, a valve control member, as for instance a rotatable handle, for said valve means, and a control shaft disposed within said pipe and connecting said control member to said shut-off valve means.
Prior art sillcocks of this type are normally designed in such a manner that the valve control member is located together with the water outlet, as for instance a spout or a hose coupling, in the cold space on the cold side of the wall, whereas the shut-off valve is located on the opposite side of the wall in the warm space. The reason for this location of the shut-off valve is that the entire sillcock assembly shall be drained when the shut-off valve is closed so that any freezing of water within the sillcock assembly with accompanying damages on the assembly is prevented.
This prior art design of sillcocks entails, however, that several components of the sillcock cannot be assembled until on the building site and that before this assembly the water flow pipe of the sillcock as well as the control shaft for the shut-off valve must first be cut to lengths adapted to the thickness of the wall in which the sillcock is to be mounted. Further, threaded joints are necessary either within the wall or close to the surfaces of the wall, which joints can give cause to hidden water leakage in the interior of the wall. The shut-off valve occupies also a considerable space on the inner side of the wall. An additional complication is caused by the fact that generally a vacuum valve must be connected to the sillcock when this is mounted.
The object of the present invention is therefore to provide a water faucet or sillcock of the kind defined in the first paragraph of this specification, in which the disadvantages discussed above are eliminated.